


The Absence of Magic

by MissILikeTooManyFandoms



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5542883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissILikeTooManyFandoms/pseuds/MissILikeTooManyFandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura undertakes a strange ritual to receive a piece of sacred knowledge. When she shares what she has learned with Carmilla, she is surprised by the vehement reaction she receives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Absence of Magic

**Author's Note:**

> My Secret Santa gift to thisismylifeasliztal on Tumblr. I've never been too fond of soulmate AUs and so here is my sort of anti-soulmate take. Don't worry though, no angst here.

The hallway was eerily quiet. No flies buzzing. No pencils scratching. Not even the gentle hum of bodies in rest could be heard. Everything was still. Laura had never quite believed the rumors about an abandoned floor in the Robespierre building but there she was, turning the corner on to floor seven, met only with silence. For a moment, Laura allowed herself to believe she had walked into a post-apocalyptic world, moments after The End. The lights still glared down on her, fliers still hung loosely on scattered bulletin boards. The fliers enhanced the fantasy. The events and classes they announced dated back to the sixties.

The Laura of a few months prior would have been pretty perturbed, maybe anxious to investigate, but easy to call away. Thriller turned horror movie but Laura had seen more terrible things in the previous weeks.

She continued down the hall, comforted by the small noise her steps made. It was unnatural for any place to be so silent, especially one she inhabited. She was reminded of a trip with her father. An avid outdoorsman and spelunker, though less the latter after the freak accident with her mother which now seemed highly supernatural given the bear’s ability to fly, Mr. Hollis had taken young Laura on her first tour of a local cave. Half an hour in, when the tour guide asked for silence and turned off the lights placed strategically throughout the vast underground cavern, Laura experienced a silence so profound it gave her nightmares. The tour guide had said this silence had driven lost souls the world over mad. If lost explorers were found, they were always slamming rocks together or humming, anything to end the awful, oppressive silence.

The hallway was the same. The only difference was this cavern was lit.

Her eyes roamed the numbered placards on the doors she passed, muttering “777” under her breath repeatedly. She had tried not to let her encyclopedic knowledge of Harry Potter and the magical properties of the number seven overwhelm her when she had finally tracked down a solid lead on a rumor older than Silas itself.

Classroom 777 was unremarkable from the outside. It was not a corner room nor did it even appear to be a large lecture hall, just a simple classroom, probably filled with wooden tables and rats. The frosted glass window gave no hint of what was inside. With a deep breath, Laura pushed the door open.

It was not a simple classroom. The walls seemed to waver, flickering as if made from flames, but colored lilac though even that seemed to be in flux. All of the desks rested to Laura’s right, stacked upright against the wall three tables high. The windows, however, did not flicker and instead appeared to have been poorly blacked out. Laura noticed this all only in her periphery for the woman hunched in front of a shockingly large bonfire at the center of the room dominated her attention.

“ _Verbum_?” The woman did not turn but her voice was wrong. It burned in a way Laura could not understand, as if her voice was fire against her ears. It was not a single voice either, but a chorus tied to one individual. It left Laura gasping, forgetting the script she had so carefully memorized in preparation.

“I…um…” Laura stumbled forward but shouted as the woman whirled, revealing a terrifying black and green wooden mask. It was poorly made but the grain glowed a bright, painful orange.

“ _VERBUM_?” The chorus surrounded Laura, pressing in on her eardrums. She thought she felt blood running down her face. She shook but managed to swallow, her mind returning to her as the room pulsed, somehow dampening the voice for but a moment.

“Sacrae scientiae.” She tamped down the urge to point out that it was in fact two words and not one. She quickly forgot any urge to knit pick an ancient power beyond her comprehension when the burning ceased. The woman waved Laura forward and she took her place on the other side of the fire, knuckles white as she gripped the hem of her shirt. Once Laura was in place, the woman looked up again, eyes boring into Laura’s but before she could fear that the woman would speak again, the woman simply nodded, gesturing to a knife set on a pedestal to Laura’s right, hidden from the door by the unceasing flames.

“Right. Those who come here know what to do.” The woman blinked and Laura knew she was only speaking to herself. With a deep breath, she grabbed the knife and without much more thought, dragged it against the inside of her forearm, not deep enough to scar, but certainly enough to draw blood. Using the knife, she let exactly three drops fall into the flames. The woman’s eyes, unusually bright inside her mask, stared but Laura could not meet her gaze.

The fire popped with every drop and upon the third, roared, blazing even higher and flashing a sickening shade of bright green. Though she longed to step back, Laura fought the urge, allowing the flames to lick dangerously close to her face but just as her research had said, the flames quickly receded and a single piece of parchment flew out of the flames and into her outstretched palm.

“Harry, did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?” Laura whispered. The woman was unamused but Laura ignored those unblinking eyes to shakily flip over the piece of torn parchment.

_Carmilla Karnstein_

When Laura finished reading the parchment for the fifth time, she finally looked up, finding herself in the lobby of the Robespierre Building with no memory of how she had gotten there.

 

Three weeks later, Carmilla was dead. Thankfully Carmilla did not stay dead for long.

“So you’re a giant black cat, huh?” The dread in her stomach had turned to butterflies faster than Laura could process, the butterflies quickly evolving into dragons.

“I kind of hoped you’d figure it out. I thought I was being clever.” Carmilla spoke once they both stopped laughing, quickly pulling Laura back into her arms.

“Maybe a little too clever.” They laughed again as Carmilla shrugged. Laura reached up, stroking Carmilla’s cheek. They stared at each other for several of her heartbeats but then the words Laura had locked up so tightly came spilling out, nearly choking her with their ferocity.

“I…I did it, you know. I found the witch and performed the ritual. You know? The one everyone talks about but doesn’t talk about? Everyone knows. It’s kind of weird…now that I think about it…that we never talked about it. Especially given…well…I don’t know. Maybe you don’t believe in magic. That’d be funny. A vampire who doesn’t believe in magic. I…I didn’t really believe in it either. I wanted to of course. Who doesn’t after reading Harry Potter?” She took a shuddering breath as Carmilla’s arms dropped, an unreadable expression taking over her features.

“Laura…” It was there. Something Laura could not place but it was a tone in her voice that Laura had only heard in her nightmares.

“It was really easy to find everything out. To learn the script, the secret words. LaFontaine knew all of it. Of course they did. Perry told me not to but it’s not my fault the knowledge fractured their friendship. Right? It could not always be like that. I’d never believed in any of it you know. Not a single word. My mother died when I was six. My father was never himself again. How can soulmates be real if something like that can happen? But…”

“Laura, I-“ Laura ignored the quiver in Carmilla’s voice, the dangerous glint in her eyes.

“Then I came here and everything happened. And when we were planning and you were bringing me hot cocoa I wondered. I dared to think of what Silas would be like after we killed the Dean and…I went to the seventh floor of the Robespierre Building.”

“Laura, no, you didn’t. No-“

“It was your name in the fire, Carmilla.”

“Don’t say it.” The words glanced off Laura. She was invincible now. The words were her armor. The surety of magic.

“You’re my soulmate.” Not even Carmilla whirling away, head in her hands, phased Laura. Silence reigned for twelve heartbeats before Carmilla spoke.

“I don’t believe in soulmates, Laura.” Then everything shattered. The armor, the confidence, and Laura’s heart. The tears welled and her muscles tensed. Fight or flight but all Laura wanted to do was fall apart but in that singular moment before the tear first fell, Carmilla grabbed her hand, her expression impossible soft. “When I was a girl, no older than sixteen, I sought out a witch and I performed the ritual. It was Ell.” Her words and tone did not match, but Laura was captivated perhaps in some masochistic urge. “Then I died and a few years after my dark rebirth, I performed it again. Still, Ell. It was baffling to me, that I, a creature without a soul could maintain a soulmate. I checked every twenty years, aligning almost perfectly with every day of my return to Silas. Ell. Ell. El. And then I met Ell and I was in love. And you know the rest. That’s why I don’t believe in soulmates.” Laura took a shuddering breath.

“But…I….the ritual…”

“I love you, Laura, but I don’t love you because of what some scrap of paper said. I love you for you, for who you are and who we are together. So my soulmate isn’t you. So what. And you better start laughing, cupcake.”

“Why?” A smile was already blooming across Laura’s face despite the tears tracking down her face.

“Because I’m a vampire who doesn’t believe in magic.”

 

When everything fell apart with so much death and an abundance of sugary snack foods, Laura snorted at the fairy queen’s so called power. She had not been made for Carmilla nor had she been led to that room and Silas by any sort of spell. Suddenly running into a forest and even tin soldiers carrying them off did not dissuade her from her and Carmilla’s personal truth.

They were not whole. They had lost so much, including parts of themselves and each other but Laura knew they had a multitude of chances before them, because they had each chosen the other.

They did not believe in magic, but Laura believed in the strength of their choice.


End file.
